A Journey to Survivor Badassery

20. Under Attack | #Blog4MH

I’ve tried and thought about writing post #20 about three different times now. Mainly, I’ve tried doing yesterday’s daily prompt yesterday, the recovery A-Z challenge the day before that and yesterday as a SADIM post.

Yet, here we are now.

The past few days have been a bit of a roller coaster ride. Monday night I started my period. Oh fun. Monday is also when I started feeling the effects of a cold coming on. Plus it’s near finals time. What a great combination!

I’ve been getting triggered from twitter lately, as you guys have heard. I had a slight altercation with someone on twitter the other day that left me shaken and vulnerable. I had a moment of stress and a small crisis Monday night, after hearing some information about doggo related stuff that I hadn’t been expecting, mainly more responsibilities stuff and also the lack of faith in me that I can care for another animal.

I realized after I made a tweet that I was very much capable of self-harming and had a mental image of doing so that led me to text some friends. That helped. I bypassed that.

Tuesday was all right. I worked on some school related material. But I haven’t been eating well in the last week. I’ve been hungry but not interested in eating. My self-care in that sense has been off. I also have had trouble staying asleep. Even with my naps during the day a bit.

Any who, with that altercation on twitter I felt more vulnerable on Wednesday.

What happened later is a friend of mine was telling me all about their school workload and the hours they had to work and I got overwhelmed from THEIR stuff. I made a joking remark that in their situation I wouldn’t have been able to handle all that.

Then I realized I wasn’t joking.

And I accidentally triggered myself with those memories, thoughts and feelings.

And my anxiety skyrocketed.

And then I was in a crisis.

I felt unsafe in my safe place.

I couldn’t move, I needed to, wanted to, but couldn’t. Because I was hungry the anxiety was even worse. Because I was tired the anxiety was worse. Because I was already stressed and vulnerable by other factors in my life, the anxiety was worse.

I was a solid 90 on the 100 scale.

Having the intrusive thoughts made me even MORE anxious. I was physically shaking, my heart was racing and beating irregularly here and there (which was uncomfortable by so much) and I was having racing thoughts and talking very quickly.

Another friend of mine that I was actually with at the time helped to be there for me. They asked me what they could do. We played with some modeling clay. (which helped quite a bit). I tried texting a couple other friends but they were busy.

I needed Craig and he wasn’t there, until he was. And I told him what was happening and he suggested going to the counseling center, so there I went.

That was probably a panic attack that I had, that I’ve never had before and hope I don’t again. It was terrible. I rarely get THAT bad of anxiety so it was all around new and terrible.

But I went to the center and I spoke with someone and I was down to a 40 when I got out. I went and got some sushi. Ate that. And just continued working on calming down thereafter.

Later on, the depressive slide came to me. So I had my parent pick me up. ‘Cause otherwise I would have needed to go back to the counseling center (which is all right, but I just wanted to go home).

And now we’re here.

Having to recount the story multiple times wasn’t all that helpful for me. So I didn’t mention it right away last night. We got some Little Caesar’s pizza and my favorite breadsticks and I ate dinner and then went to sleep around 8p. I felt bad for not doing even a SADIM for a song that helped me the night before but…

It’s been suggested to me that all this focus on mental health may be triggering me more than helping me. I don’t know about that for sure.

I don’t have many people believing in me right now and that hurts. I’m under attack, mentally and physically. I don’t know how I’ll make it through the summer. I don’t have perspective. I don’t know how to move through this.

But I have a few days left of the semester. I have a few essays left to turn in and a final on Monday at 3p to study for and read and watch movies for. I think I will watch movies this weekend and be spreading out the reading assignments from now til Sunday.I have a couple of emails to send my professor’s about extensions, particularly in sociology for a late paper I’m turning in.

I want to say more, but I’ll do it separately. Otherwise, I’ll just be deleting this. I’m sorry. 😦

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